a farming resource blog

Since my friend Josh at Slowhand Farm turned me on to Eatwell Farm out of Dixon California, I’ve been thoroughly intrigued by all the great systems approaches that Nigel has towards vegetable farming. He finds innovative tools to accomplish his tasks but always in a way that has his workers best interests in mind.

Here are two videos that illustrate a couple of their awesome cultivating tools

Nigel has a great blog too that I enjoy reading and getting updates on what he’s got going on at Eatwell.

Some fellow farmers out of Minnesota with an electric conversion of their cultivating tractor. This idea is really starting to gain a little momentum. Check out the video of them seeding with the tractoring too.

And here’s a look at their garlic digger Simple is good.

I’m starting my search around the net to see what kind of info I can start drumming up from other folks. Seems like we’re hitting a certain point that many newer farmers are blogging or at least online. Let’s get the info flowing.

Click To Play

I’ve had several people ask what my secret was to hilling potatoes. Secret? No secret, just two disk hillers mounted on a tool bar and drive really fast. We hill our potatoes 3 times before they get too big to drive over the beds with our tractor. We could get one more pass if we had a high clearance tractor but that’s not going to happen anytime soon. It’s been great having the big disks to hill with. I purchased them from the folks at Market Farm in Pennsylvania. They’re basically one of the few full service implement dealers for small veggie equipment in the US. There’s a few others around but they seem to have the widest array of tools.

Click To Play

We bought a new rototiller this spring to run behind the higher horsepower Landini tractor. We bought a 64″ model that would till the wheel tracks as I was making beds. This would help reduce the weed pressure that always happens in the wheel tracks. (Before I just used a 4 foot model that would till the 4 foot bed but left the wheel tracks to grow weeds like crazy. We would then have to come back continuously with the walk behind BCS tiller- A real time killing project) I decided to try a row marking system that mounted right on the flap of the tiller, allowing the wheels to float with the terrain. Also because the wheel tracks are being tilled- the tire tread tracks being what I used to line up for the next beds- I added two extra marking wheels on the outside to mark the edge of the bed. All in all it works pretty well. There was some bending and adjusting of the marking wheel mounts to get the angle with the ground just right, but other than that it’s worked pretty well. Let me know if you have any comments or additions to this creation.

Yeah I know, I haven’t posted anything for awhile. My excuse? Well, it is spring after all. We’ve been transplanting and seeding like mad, in between rain storms and my view has pretty much been this:

Click To Play

Pretty decent quality video considering it’s with my phone and I’m rototilling……

Ok, so coming up is my latest equipment adventure. I’m working on making my “ground driven pull behind” fertilizer spreader into a “front mount 12 volt motor driven” fertilizer spreader.

Pictures and video to come.

I was just chatting with my friend Vince today at farmers market about grains. Many things to ponder when one sees the coming rise of fuel prices. When does it become economically viable to start producing grains for sale on a smaller scale? Commodities don’t currently allow for this to happen due to economic constraints. Some fellow farmers have gotten together a blog for such a discussion. Please check it out if this interests you.

All the folks involved do their homework on whatever topic they’re focused on. Good stuff. I’d also love to see some collaboration from outside the Oregon farmer contingency…anyone else know grains?

When we started to tractor cultivate with the Electric G, we needed to make sure that the spacing between rows was very precise and consistent. Many larger farms use transplanters or vacuum seeders to set the spacing between rows. We transplant by hand and direct seed by a hand-push seeder. The solution I came up with is a simple tool bar mounted on the back of the tiller with bars made from 5/8″ flat stock with lawn mower wheels mounted at the base. I had originally thought that disc openers (like what one sees on a seed drill) would work, but I couldn’t find any used ones and I think the lawn mower wheels work better anyway. They actually firm up the soil within the row to be planted and seem to preserve some moisture this way. Best of all, this system of mounting to the tiller saves me another pass, another implement switch, as well as some fuel. Check out the video and feel free to email me with any questions.

Here’s our soil block recipe that we use. Sometimes we’ll add more compost to a mix depending on how much fertility we feel the compost has. We mix our soil in an old mortar mixer. That’s the type of mixers that have paddles and actually churn the mix instead of a concrete mixer that just spins and turns the mix. We always mix the ingredients dry first (You’ll notice on the recipe it says “mix” after a series of ingredients are added. This helps you end up with a even mix) and then add the water. How much moisture? Well that’s where the artisan skills come into play. Probably more than you think but not so much you end up with a soup. And remember, the peat moss absorbs a lot of moisture over time so if you wet it down, leave, and come back you’ll generally find a much drier mix than you started with. Ideally I aim for a mix that I can grip in a handful and squeeze a fair amount of water out when my grip is closed.

How’s that for non specific in terms of moisture? Email me if you need more input.

About 2 seasons ago we invested in a cultivating tractor. We had been doing all of our weeding by hand, but we started to get behind a lot of the time, and were looking to expand our growing space. We knew that there were a lot of options out there- Farmall made some good ol’ cultivating tractors as well as Allis Chalmers. (There are many others too, but these two seem to be the most readily available these days) One thing we knew about cultivating tractors was they were generally gas powered as opposed to diesel. This equates to less power, the inability to run biodiesel, and just the same standard chugg-a-lug of old tractor motors.

During the investigation of what tractor to look for, I came across a great resource for converting an old Allis Chalmers G from gas to electric. That’s right- 48 volts DC!

So I started the hunt for an old AC G with no motor. Came across one outside of Corvallis, Oregon. Bought it for $800 and then spent another $2500 on the motor, batteries, and other parts for the conversion.

Over the next 2 months I stripped the tractor down to parts, refurbished anything that needed repaired, and then put it back together and added the electric components.

The next question was deciding what cultivating setup to use. I talked to several other farmers to see what they used and consulted the book “Steel in the Field” and came to the conclusion that a basket weeder was the way to go. The basket weeder works great in lighter soils- loams, sand, silt- but does have some limitations in heavier rocky soils. The basket weeder also works best when weeds are at the white hair stage. In other words when the weeds are still just emerging. If you have an established stand of grasses or other weeds then a tool bar with sweeps might be a better bet. (I’m setting such a tool bar up this season and will post about it once it’s finished.)

So check out the video of the basket weeder in action and listen to the quiet purrrrr of the electric motor. Another thing you might notice is the tank mounted on the back of the tractor’s battery box. This is used to spray fish fertilizer as I weed. It runs off it’s own separate 12 volt battery. This way I can cultivate and fertilize in one pass. Any other questions about the tractor and it’s conversion just email me.

At our farm we use soilblocks for all of our greenhouse starts that will eventually be transplanted out into the field. A lot of people don’t know about soilblocking and it may be due to the fact that many folks feel that the extra labor is not worth it.

We’ve found for us here in southern Oregon, where we have highly unpredictable springs as far as weather goes, the soil blocks work really great. Having the plants in the blocks gives us several advantages-

-If you do hit a raining spell, the plants have more room to grow, and can stay in the flats longer.

-Because the blocks all physically touch one another (meaning there’s no divider between cells) the roots are able to intermingle and in essence have the whole flat to grow in.

-And the blocks hold moisture better and longer than standard plug flats.

-Not to mention the fact that we can reuse our flats over and over and not have to throw away any plastic inserts.

We started out using a 4-block maker and have since moved up to the 20 block maker. There’s a variety of sources for the various types of blockers out there. We’ve always gotten ours from Johnny’s Selected Seeds (no I’m not getting paid by Johnny’s for the link, they’re just a great company) but I know that Peaceful Valley Farm Supply carries them as well.

To make a block you have to concoct a specialized soil mix that works well when very wet. The idea here that you take the very wet mix and compress it into the soilblocker and press the release and you’ll have a block. The actually block making process has been the hardest thing for me to explain to people over the years, so thanks to the invention of video on the internet I’ve added a small clip on making the blocks.